I'm so embarrassed

The thing is, I can't want you to lose weight and I can't make your choices for you. It comes down to YOU and you have to decide why you want to do it. Then you have to just get off your *kitten* and do it.

I don't allow myself to "have" to make bad food choices. I pre-plan my meals and I bring all my food with me when I leave for work in the morning. I cook all our dinners. And I plan trips to the gym or plan exercise routines at home and I just don't skip them. I do all this because there is a certain way I want to look and a way I want to feel, and I know that these choices I'm making are helping me to achieve that.

It doesn't mean you can't ever eat at Denny's again. But you aren't going to get what you want by consistently making the wrong choices, especially when you KNOW they are wrong. No one here can fix that for you.

Worth repeating... YOU have to want it and do it for YOU!!

tons of sites to help get finances in order? Hummmmmm..... which ones do you reccommend?

I have mantras to stop me from spending my money on baguettes and pastries.

So for example yesterday I would have killed for a baguette on my way home from work but i repeated motivational quotes and made myself day dream about fitting into that killer outfit i bought next weekend and making my bfs ex so crazy. Stuff like that is what makes me steer clear and it is what keeps me motivated when i go out for a run in the cold. (i have lost 22lbs in 3 months just through cal counting and going out for a run 3 times a week! no money on a gym spent, theres lots of exercise you can do for free!) I used to be EXACTLY like you, my student loan and all my time went on food but you can train your brain out of doing it and reward yourself with clothes in smaller sizes, not big dinners.

YOU CAN DO IT GIRL!

Thanks for the advice again...

Today I went to the gym,
and spent 5 dollars...
On a greek salad, and an unsweetened green tea.

I still managed to lose 1.7 pounds this week, which is crazy.

I've decided that I'll only allow myself to spent $5 a day on food,
and make healthier choices.

I talked to my boyfriend,
and tonight he is making steamed vegetables and spaghetti squash for dinner.
&& He said on days we don't hike or go to the gym, we'll at least go for a walk.

I will continue to make baby steps towards a healthy lifestyle..
I do think I turn to food for comfort, because that's how I grew up
but I'm making an effort one day at a time to fix that.

Thanks for the help and support.

You can do this!! And it feels better sounds like you have some strong support at home too! We will always be here to help you- and congrats and the start of your weight loss/fitness journey!

You know, I can definitely relate to the boyfriend aspect of this post...my bf & I are always *talking about* eating healthier, but then splurging on heavy dinners & lots of wine. It's like we egg each other on. Because, honestly, it's fun to pig out & be lazy together sometimes. So don't be embarrassed. Plus, the more embarrassed/guilty you feel, the more likely you'll be to root yourself deeper in the habit.

Let it go, & make small changes at a time. You can do it

I find it really helpful to write things down......my suggestion would be to make a pros and cons list about why you would want to cook at home and make healthier choices vs. eating out all the time. Mind you, there will be good and bad things about each choice, but when you add it all up maybe it will make you realize that taking care of yourself is really a high priority. Maybe you and your bf could start cooking together!

Eating well and financing your healthy choices can be really difficult. I work in finance for a living and I still find it really challenging sometimes. And what's worse, when we worry about our finances we generally look for some way to forget about our money troubles and find comfort (which explains why we eat the things we know we shouldn't)!

As far as financing the healthy choices, here are some of the things I do to cut down costs:

1) Coupons! Seriously they are awesome...and by spending maybe and hour or so a week clipping them from the paper and searching online, I cut down my grocery bill anywhere from $50-$100 per trip to the store (sometimes even more)! Along with this keep an eye on the store ads and if you aren't terribly brand loyal you can get things like toothpaste, toilet paper, paper towels, and tons of other stuff for free...yes I said FREE!!!! This will free up some extra money to buy some healthy things.

2) Like several other people said, shop the outer rim of the grocery store. Also, don't always buy pre-packaged fruits and veggies (a lot of times they're more expensive than the ones you weigh and bag yourself). And DON'T go to the store hungry! If you walk into the supermarket with an empty stomach, you'll be more tempted by the Twinkies and fried frozen foods and things that aren't very nutritional.

3) Use a budgeting website. Your bank may even have the tools for you to do this online from their site, but there are so many options and Apps to help manage finances. You can set up 2 separate budgets for food: groceries and eating out.
Another way to go (I used this method with my fiance when teaching him how to budget) is to set a budget and withdraw cash from your account and divide it into envelopes for each portion of your budget. When you run out of money in a particular envelope, that's it! And if you have money left over at the end of the pay period / month (however you want to structure it) you can put it into an "extras" envelope to spend on a treat for yourself!

4) Prep ahead of time! I'm so busy that when I wasn't doing this I was so much more tempted to stop and pick up a burger or other unhealthy foods on the go instead of making good choices. Now I set aside a couple hours during the week (usually Sunday afternoon) and just prep food for the week. I bought a bunch of plastic food storage containers and I bake chicken, steam veggies, and portion out my lunches and snacks for the entire week! That way, in the morning I can just grab what I need out of the fridge and be on my way without having to wake up earlier or put any thought into it. I just choose a movie on Netflix on my Kindle and get my girly chick-flick on while I make meals for the week! Plus, when I have a sudden snack attack there's a pre-portioned healthy option ready to go so I'm not tempted to reach for the Cheetos.

5) Don't totally deprive yourself from eating out. Everybody has that one restaurant that they love and would feel amiss if they never ate there (or rarely ate there) again. Mine happens to be Chipotle---seriously I could eat the stuff every single day and never get sick of it. So instead of saying I will never eat Chipotle, I plan my trips there so a) I have a little treat to reward myself for a couple weeks of hard work sticking to a diet and b) I can somewhat healthier choices when I go an not feel guilty over eating something I love! And if you do happen to make that sudden pit stop and Denny's or McDonalds or (insert your favorite fast food place here) don't let that be an excuse to eat poorly the rest of the day. We all do it: "Well I had the bacon, egg, and cheese bagel for breakfast so I guess it doesn't matter if I get fast food tacos for lunch, and since I've already messed up that bad, there's no harm in having the 7 layer chocolate cake for dessert after dinner!" And then the next morning you wake up and feel crappy about yourself and do it all over again. There's nothing wrong with rewarding yourself with a little treat...but make sure you PLAN it! Plus, if you plan, you can usually find coupons to save you even more money when you go out (see it all ties together).

7) You might want to look around at other gyms to see what options are out there that might help bring the cost down. Before you set out, make a list of the things you like about your current gym and would need to feel successful while training. You can also consider looking for workouts online or buying videos (you can find workout videos for dirt cheap at a lot of stores--even at $10 a piece, you could buy 10 for the price of 1 month at your gym and have a lot of variety)!

Okay so I know I just threw a lot of info out there at you, but all of this works...seriously. Two years ago when I graduated from college, I barely made more than minimum wage and had about $3,000 in credit card debt plus HELLO REAL WORLD finances to take care of.

Using the budgeting tools I mentioned, I not only paid off my credit card, I put a substantial amount of money into savings and I'm paying for a good portion of my wedding. Granted now I make much more than I did two years ago, but I promise it can be done when you barely have pennies to rub together.

Good luck! I hope some of this essay I just wrote helps you reach your goals.

I understand your frustration.

Eating healthy is expensive, and eating out is more convenient. Unfortunately.

What really helped me in the beginning was cooking more at home. I didn't necessarily start out cooking healthy foods, because the decision to cook more was so that my husband and I could save $$. We both work full-time and have three kids, so buying food everyday was convenient for us. After about a month of doing that, I signed up for a 10-week Weight Loss Challenge at my job. I initially signed up becuase I needed the motivation to start eating healthy and exercising after being inactive for over one year. About half-way through the Challenge, a co-worker suggested that I use the MyFitnessPal app. Using it really helped me to see where I was packing on the most calories, so I gradually began to change what I ate, instead of eating less. For example, I used to eat two bananas everyday as part of my mid-day snack or breakfast. When I saw how much sugar and calories they had in them, I swapped them out for boiled egg whites and one large Golden Delicious apple, which burns more calories in digestion than consumption. (BTW, it may help to look up Negative Calorie Foods) I drank lots of water, and had smaller portions throughout the day, instead of three large meals. It definitley took a while for my body to adjust, but it paid off. I went from 163lbs. to 150lbs.. Not only did I win the Challenge at work, but now my husband is starting to eat healthier on his own.

tons of sites to help get finances in order? Hummmmmm..... which ones do you reccommend?

Mint.com is fantastic! Can't say enough good things about it! And there's an app so you can track everything on the go.

It allows you to link all of your assets and debt so you can see it all without looking at 20 different websites (on mine I have my bank accounts, credit card, store cards, student loans, 401(k), seriously the sky's the limit with what you can add to this thing).

Not only can you establish budgets, you can set up goals like "pay off credit card debt" or "establish and emergency fund" or "save for retirement" and it helps you plan how much you need to put toward those goals per month to reach them within a certain time period.

Don't reward with food! Find something else! Have your BF take you for a couple's massage or pedicures. Find another way to reward. As for the bad eating day, I think most of us have been there at some point. All you can do is move on from here. Good advice previously!

First you have to want to do it. If you go into it begrudgingly, you won't be successful. Knowing what you have to do is a good part of solving the problems, but actually DOING IT is something different - and if you try to conquer the beast all at the same time, you're probably going to fail.

Take small steps. Eliminate the coffee's first. Then, if you're eating out every day for dinner, try cutting it down a couple of days. What can you do today, or what are you willing to do today, that will help you get you where you want to be?
What can you do that will set you up to be successful? Can I get rid of all the crap (chips, dips, sugary cakes/snacks) in my house and replace them with stuff that is healthier for me (light string cheese, yogurt, fruit) that I'm willing to eat? Are you willing to replace one soda or one coffee a day with water?

Once you get a handle on one thing, then just add to it. I used to drive through either McDonald's, Hardee's or Steak 'n Shake EVERY workday. I have probably only done that about 5 times in the last 18 months. Now I usually have yogurt, or fruit, or a protein bar or some combination thereof. Then I lessened my intake of soda's to 1/day at lunch. Then I got a small dorm fridge in my office that has bottled water, string cheese, yogurt, sometimes a salad or pineapple or grape tomatoes....snacks that I'm willing to have instead of worser stuff....and I did it this way so I wouldn't have to go into the kitchen at work and see any of the bad stuff in there.

Further, if you stick to lean, healthy proteins, the fat/carbs will take care of themselves. The better the quality of food intake, the better the weight loss journey will go.

Good luck!!!